Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• I heard word on Monday that former KU Libraries director Thomas R. Buckman died last week at age 88 in New York.

Some creative Googling led me to something called the International Dictionary of Library Histories, which discussed a bit of Buckman’s years at KU.

He was director at KU from 1961 to 1968, after which he left to become university librarian at Northwestern University.

Buckman succeeded the widely hailed Robert Vosper, and completed an addition to Watson Library in 1964.

The International Dictionary of Library Histories also says that Buckman oversaw the first introduction to computer technology to the libraries’ work, as he appointed a library systems specialist to

Buckman was also director of libraries in 1966, when Helen Foresman Spencer announced a gift of $2 million to construct the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. That building was completed in November 1968.

Buckman’s family suggests memorial contributions in his name to the Lawrence Public Library, VNA Hospice Care Cottage or the Kansas State Historical Society.

• Thanks to a tipster who added another name to the list of KU folks who have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. I first mentioned the literary prizes yesterday, along with two people with KU ties who were nominated for the awards.

I omitted the name of Mary Stone Dockery, a master’s student studying creative writing in the English department. She was nominated for her poem “Pisces Elegy,” published in issue 21 of Blood Lotus Journal.

• KU communication studies professor Nancy Baym was mentioned in the New York Times this week, in an article discussing a study that showed the phenomenon of teens sending sexual images over cell phones might not be as widespread as initially expected.

Baym, who studies social media, wasn’t involved with the study, but said that the fact that a third of sexual messages were created or sent with the involvement of alcohol or drugs indicates that children doing the riskiest messaging are doing other risky things, too.

She told the newspaper that it was important that the research documented “that a considerable percentage of texting is not problematic, but an extension of the kinds of flirting and relationship-maintaining behavior that goes on in consensual teen relationships and stays within those relationships.”

• There’s no prize (yet) for the best tip for Heard on the Hill, but you’d better send me something to ahyland@ljworld.com just in case there ever is one.